Roman brickmakers identified

Two brothers are behind Rome's greatest monuments, according to Italian archaeologists who have discovered two furnaces that provided the bricks for buildings such as the Colosseum and the Pantheon.

Found in Mugnano in Teverina, a tiny village some 80 kilometers (50 miles) north of Rome, the furnaces belonged to Tullus and Lucanus, brothers of the Domitii family, as an inscription found on the road leading to the brickfield confirms: "iter privatum duorum Domitiorum" (private road of the two Domitii). . .

Settled around the first half of the 1st century A.D., the furnaces remained the property of the Domitii family for more than a century. They were then inherited by emperor Marcus Aurelius and remained the emperor's property until brick production ended in the 4th and 5th centuries A.D.

Posted by David on August 10, 2005 11:51 AM